A multitude of questions for a conceptually simple animation

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hey Folks,

I’m having a whole bunch of n00b problems that is just wasting a lot of time. I’m not sure if I’m having interface issues, or I’m just doing things in the completely wrong order. I’ve been reading the Wiki and other forum posts but no one seems to have such basic questions, or something’s just wrong with my installation (Blender 244).

First off, what I am trying to do:

I have a blocky ring with spokes that I want to rotate around its axis. I made the spokes and ring (composed of about 18 segments) mostly by using dupliverts, and then made them real. This part worked fine, and so far as the modelling is concerned I have gotten what I want.

Now, I want to animate the rotation. Right now, I’ve just got a whole bunch of separate objects. I figure I have to group them all together somehow. I thought that vertex groups is the way to go, but this feature does not seem to be working properly. I click on an object, I go to Edit mode and select all the vertices using “A”. I then click on the Editing buttons. I click on New and name my group “ring”. I can now deselect that object and reselect it and it shows the “ring” Vertex Group.

If I go to another object, whether I’m in Edit mode or in Object mode, I don’t see a list of groups. This might suggest that I need to create the vertex group “ring” for every single object, but that seems to make the “Assign” button useless, unles vertex groups is only supposed to apply for vertices within one object. Otherwise, I assume you’re suppose to get a list in Edit mode where you can select the “ring” group from and Assign your object’s vertices.

Given I have 18 objects in the ring however, is there an easier way to set all the objects to the same Vertex group, too?

Now perhaps the Vertex Group method is not the way to go. It would be nice to be able to treat the whole ring as as single object, just as if you created a second mesh with a previous object still selected. The two meshes will be treated as one object. How can I join separate objects together like that after they’ve already been created? How can I break them up into their component meshes again?

Lastly, what is the best way to rotate this ring around its axis? Since that axis may be manipulated by another object’s motion, should I get it to use some sort of relative rotation, or should I use an armature?

Looking forward to hearing your advice!

Lancer

2

Hello Folks,

I’ve figured out how to use the Join function, so now I’ve got all the objects grouped. So really only the animation questions remain.

Thanks,

Lancer

3

Vertex groups are unique to each Object as you’ve found out. You’d really only use them if you are going to use an Armature to control the animation.

You can join all your object together by selecting them all then pressing CTR-J (Object/ Join Objects). If you want to seperate them later, you’d go back to EDIT mode, then select the vertices you want to seperate and press P (Edit / Vertices / Seperate)
.

If you’re just going to animate the entire object without any of its individual pieces moving then the CTR-J join method will be the simplest.

If you want to anmate the individual pieces, then I’d leave them as seperate Objects, but I would recomend adding an armature and add a bone for each object. You can then just parent each object to each bone with CTR-P (after selecting the armature and switching it to Pose mode (CTR-TAB). The advantage of an armature is that all the bones will be grouped together into an Action, where it’s easier to manipulate the timing of the bones (Objects) using the “high level” Action editor… tweaking with the IPO curve editor if neccessary.

You could just select all the objects and animate them all at once without joining them, but that will create indiviual IPO curves for every object (which may or may not be what you want). Without an armature though all the IPO curves are seperate and will be difficult to coordinate if you decide to animate the pieces seperately.

Mike